WASHINGTON: Donald Trump has drafted former Democratic lawmaker Tulsi Gabbard, a self-described Hindu-American, as a foil to help him prepare for the September 10 debate with Kamala Harris. The move is aimed at bringing some structure and discipline to a campaign that by most accounts has gone off the rails, mostly on account of Trump’s own mercurial personality.
The former President famously disdains preparation and prefers to wing it with ad libbing what many analysts now see as hyperbolic falsehoods and pointless digressions. But he is believed to have zeroed in Gabbard because, aside from the gender angle, he thinks she eviscerated Harris during a 2019 debate when both were running for the Democratic nomination.
Indeed, the Trump campaign maintained that the former President “does not need traditional debate prep” but said he will “continue to meet with respected policy advisers and effective communicators like Tulsi Gabbard, who successfully dominated Kamala Harris on the debate stage in 2020.”
Gabbard, a four-term Congresswoman from Hawaii, has since decamped from the Democratic Party and moved into the MAGA orbit, mainly on account of differences over national security issues where she is more aligned with Trump and his benign view of Russia. Born in American Samoa to parents of European ancestry, she embraced Hinduism under the influence of her Indiana-born mother, who was associated with the Krishna consciousness movement.
Trump did not prepare for the June 27 debate with President Biden in terms of having a foil. But things have changed since then with Harris now running rings around the former President, coming across as a young and energetic compared to Biden who ceded the party nomination to her after the debate debacle. Pollsters and pundits are now talking of Trump as the new Biden, with Trump’s age and mental acuity issues coming to the fore.
Harris is now leading in most polls, both nationwide and in battleground states, with Republican operatives in panic mode over Trump’s erratic public utterances that is turning off all but his hardcore MAGA base. But notwithstanding her Hindu faith, MAGA activists are now embracing Gabbard, circulating clips of her taking down Harris in the 2019 debate, although Kamala supporters maintain she held her ground. Both women eventually dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Biden.
Since then Gabbard has moved closer to Trump and was even briefly in contention to be his running mate before he chose JD Vance. While her erstwhile colleagues in the Democratic party accuse her of being a “Kremlin propagandist,” Gabbard, who served in the US military, now sees Democrats as war-mongers.
Her induction into the Trump team comes amid growing disquiet among Republicans about the former President’s volatile and capricious public comments that is rapidly losing him support, particularly among independent and undecided voters who will determine the outcome of the elections.
On Friday, Trump shocked his own party faithfuls by saying — in an effort to ingratiate himself to billionaire GOP donors — the Presidential Medal of Freedom given to civilians is “much better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor typically given to military personnel.
“It’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, that’s soldiers ‒ they’re either in very bad shape, because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead,” Trump said in remarks that a military veterans organisation subsequently described as “asinine.”
Military personnel generally lean towards the GOP and the comments, taken with his other insulting remarks towards veterans, including reportedly calling them “losers” and “suckers” is expected to cost him support from a reliably Republican constituency. Gabbard’s presence in his camp, given her own military background, could restore some confidence.
The former President famously disdains preparation and prefers to wing it with ad libbing what many analysts now see as hyperbolic falsehoods and pointless digressions. But he is believed to have zeroed in Gabbard because, aside from the gender angle, he thinks she eviscerated Harris during a 2019 debate when both were running for the Democratic nomination.
Indeed, the Trump campaign maintained that the former President “does not need traditional debate prep” but said he will “continue to meet with respected policy advisers and effective communicators like Tulsi Gabbard, who successfully dominated Kamala Harris on the debate stage in 2020.”
Gabbard, a four-term Congresswoman from Hawaii, has since decamped from the Democratic Party and moved into the MAGA orbit, mainly on account of differences over national security issues where she is more aligned with Trump and his benign view of Russia. Born in American Samoa to parents of European ancestry, she embraced Hinduism under the influence of her Indiana-born mother, who was associated with the Krishna consciousness movement.
Trump did not prepare for the June 27 debate with President Biden in terms of having a foil. But things have changed since then with Harris now running rings around the former President, coming across as a young and energetic compared to Biden who ceded the party nomination to her after the debate debacle. Pollsters and pundits are now talking of Trump as the new Biden, with Trump’s age and mental acuity issues coming to the fore.
Harris is now leading in most polls, both nationwide and in battleground states, with Republican operatives in panic mode over Trump’s erratic public utterances that is turning off all but his hardcore MAGA base. But notwithstanding her Hindu faith, MAGA activists are now embracing Gabbard, circulating clips of her taking down Harris in the 2019 debate, although Kamala supporters maintain she held her ground. Both women eventually dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Biden.
Since then Gabbard has moved closer to Trump and was even briefly in contention to be his running mate before he chose JD Vance. While her erstwhile colleagues in the Democratic party accuse her of being a “Kremlin propagandist,” Gabbard, who served in the US military, now sees Democrats as war-mongers.
Her induction into the Trump team comes amid growing disquiet among Republicans about the former President’s volatile and capricious public comments that is rapidly losing him support, particularly among independent and undecided voters who will determine the outcome of the elections.
On Friday, Trump shocked his own party faithfuls by saying — in an effort to ingratiate himself to billionaire GOP donors — the Presidential Medal of Freedom given to civilians is “much better” than the Congressional Medal of Honor typically given to military personnel.
“It’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, that’s soldiers ‒ they’re either in very bad shape, because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead,” Trump said in remarks that a military veterans organisation subsequently described as “asinine.”
Military personnel generally lean towards the GOP and the comments, taken with his other insulting remarks towards veterans, including reportedly calling them “losers” and “suckers” is expected to cost him support from a reliably Republican constituency. Gabbard’s presence in his camp, given her own military background, could restore some confidence.